


Executive Paws

by Anonymous



Category: Original Work
Genre: Aliens, Crack, Dog Who Through a Series of Misadventures Becomes President, Gen, Politics, United States
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-19
Updated: 2018-08-19
Packaged: 2019-06-29 12:05:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 924
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15729066
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: The aliens did it.





	Executive Paws

**Author's Note:**

  * For [flipflop_diva](https://archiveofourown.org/users/flipflop_diva/gifts).



A lot of Presidents started their term with a tough situation on their hands, but it was generally agreed that alien invasion ranked among the worst.

Up until March, 2025, this had belonged to the 'theoretical' list of presidential challenges - by most people's reckoning, anyway - like incoming asteroids and hypnotised senators. 

And by other people's reckoning, when it all started to make sense around 2027 or so, it wasn't an invasion, so technically, alien invasion was still on that list.

*

What happened:

A rogue agent from the Xillulli Federation landed on earth to avoid pursuit.

Their pursuit, the far more technologically advanced D'cine, did not fail to notice this.

After demanding the Earth's authorities give up the Xillulli agent (Earth didn't decode the transmissions in time), the D'cine declared that by harbouring the agent, Earth had committed an act of war against the D'cine and the D'cine would retaliate.

Unlike their initial communications, this act of retaliation was impossible to miss: 30% of the world's human population that had been sleeping at the crucial moment transformed into animals. Generally, mammals. Quite a lot of chimpanzees, but also cats, kangaroos, dogs, and elk.

*

The story that emerged in 2028 (when the Xillulli, now under D'cine control, came to retrieve their agent under a complicated set of agreements) was that the D'cine weapon had been developed to sow confusion among the civilised peoples of a planet where the three intelligent races had all split, genetically, at about the same point in their past that the creatures that would evolve into cats and elk and kangaroos had shared genes on Earth. 

The version used on Earth had been an experimental opportunity. It had been a little wider in its targets.

It was certainly effective at sowing confusion.

There were 1.2 billion fewer human-shaped humans in the world, and 1.2 billion more animals of every kind.

*

It was quickly established that despite the difficulties in communicating, the transformed humans had the same intelligence that they had always had.

Some met unhappy fates, and some adapted to life with improved circumstances.

Some communities embraced the changed members among them, and some drove them out.

In the United States of America, public opinion was indubitably influenced by the fact that POTUS #47 awoke on what was known as "Ark Day" as a Siberian husky.

It was certain that if he survived his term, President Lipscomb's memoir would have a longer shelf life than that of most Presidents.

On the bright side, the D'cine's punitive act was not followed up by further action. Humanity "merely" had to deal with the fallout from the initial strike.

And President Lipscomb was also far more fortunate than many. He was surrounded by a team of people who were deeply invested in the continuing operation of the United States Government.

Even if their leader now gave speeches by repeatedly signalling affirmation to a designated 'voice' who read from his teleprompter in his stead, and if he greeted certain foreign diplomats by leaping up to place his paws on their chests.

Being surrounded by highly invested colleagues and subordinates had its dark side too, of course.

President Lipscomb the husky was almost identical to any other husky. (Neurologists could not make sense of the animals' expanded brain activity, except to presume, in a manner that made them clutch at their whisky, that the alternate thought processes took place in a kind of thinking version of cloud computing.) He was microchipped, of course. And tracked.

But when it was established through diplomatic channels that the D'cine transformation would be reversed - and at a date in early 2028 - one of the president's aides started to get ideas.

*

Trent was a bright, proactive staffer. Both influential - and easily influenced. He'd signed up to work for President Lipscomb with high hopes. Over time, he'd become jaded, and tried to hide it.

It occurred to Trent that if he substituted a real husky for Lipscomb on the day of transformation, all of Lipscomb's decisions and declarations of the last few years would be in doubt.

And someone prepared for the resulting chaos would be in a very good position to cut deals.

So he did.

It would have worked, too, except for a glorious burst of husky enthusiasm, only two weeks before Body Reclamation Day.

The-husky-who-wasn't-Lipscomb escaped his handlers for over three hours to dash through dense woods where he could not be tracked.

He was found - after a tense period in which Trent wondered if he would have to produce the real Lipscomb (who had been persuaded to go on a very private holiday to brace himself for the upcoming challenges of humanity returned to itself).

Until now, every move Lipscomb made had been monitored. Trent had swapped over the two dogs under the eye of the world. But now... if "Lipscomb" was revealed to have been a husky "all along", no one would believe the swap had occurred earlier than "Lipscomb's" mad dash.

Trent gave up on the whole deal, wrote to Lipscomb to suggest he come back from vacation early, and returned the real dog to "body double" status.

And resigned himself to being the only person who knew that a dog had been President.

(And _no_ , he imagined himself failing to explain, _not like that_.)

(In 2041, the Xillulli did at least avert an oncoming asteroid, as a gesture of diplomatic goodwill.)

(Trent did eventually publish a memoir, telling the story of the dog substitution plot.)

(It never sold as well as President Lipscomb's memoir.)


End file.
